As any cellist, harpist, or (perish the thought) double bassist will tell you, there are few things more annoying than lugging your over-sized pride and joy to and from rehearsals, jamming it into the back of a car, crushing through the barriers on the tube, or inelegantly dragging it up and down flights of stairs.

These are the large instrument-playing unfortunates who are routinely pestered with that most infamous of muso cat-calls: 'Bet you wish you'd taken up the flute?'.

Spare a thought, then, for the ill-fated player of an altogether more cumbersome orchestral instrument: the anvil.

The epitome of a heavy and clumsy object - perfect for dropping onto a cartoon villain should the need arise - this hardened steel surface is designed to be struck with an enormous hammer; the larger the better. A fact which makes its popularity on the opera stage, most notably, in Verdi's smash hit, Il trovatore, all the more surprising. How on earth are performers expected to get it to and from the rehearsals (and, of course, the pub afterwards)?

While this line of argument is, of course, to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt, the fact is that this unlikely hunk of metal has made quite an impact on the world of classical music. Despite its size and its hugely limited range, this forged steel block is a key player in Verdi's middle-period masterpiece, in the unimaginatively nicknamed 'Anvil Chorus' (otherwise, known with much more zip as the 'Coro di zingari'). Verdi's musical direction in the score is that the singers, not the percussionist, should be the ones to hit the anvils in time to the music, with basses playing on the beat, and tenors on the offbeat. As the large Italian chorus sing the praises of hard work, good wine, and gypsy women, the effect is striking in every sense of the word: the dull chime of the anvil adds a unique tone to the now famous tune, and there's something quite hypnotic about the view of a stage full of people hitting hammers on every other beat as they sing.

But it's not just Verdi who saw the anvil's potential on the opera stage. Wagner, true to form, pushed the boat out in Das Rheingold, using not one, but 18 anvils - nine small, six medium, and three large - tuned to F three octaves apart. Siegfried, too, made use of the instrument's trademark timbre, unsurprisingly in the 'forging song', 'Hoho! Hoho! Hohei!', as Siegfried carefully crafts his sword. Wagner's considerable influence on heavy metal has never been more literal.

When attempting to bring suitably metallic pieces to life, other big-hitting composers turned to the anvil: Britten and Walton both used the instrument to conjure a ‘Babylonian’ sound in their works. In The Burning Fiery Furnace, Britten uses the anvil, alongside a lyra glockenspiel and small cymbals to take his audiences back in time, musically. Walton, too, in Belshazzar's Feast, puts the metallic sound to good use in ‘Praise’: as the chorus sing praises to the gods of various materials, the composer brings appropriate instruments to the fore – trumpets for the god of gold, flutes for the god of silver, and anvils for the god of iron.

More recently, anvils have made their mark in the worlds of film music, minimalism, and pop, as composers used the instrument’s metallic properties to add depth to their pieces. Howard Shore, John Williams, and James Horner have each used it in film scores, and Louis Andriessen wrote an extended passage for solo anvils in his work De Materie (Matter), with text on the subject of shipbuilding. Even former Beatle Ringo Starr dabbled in anvil playing in arguably its most mainstream outing: the darkly eccentric hit Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

While a ‘concerto for anvil’ may not top the classical charts any time soon, there’s no doubt that this obscure instrument has forged something of a niche for itself. And in a time-poor age where we're constantly being told to work fitness into our daily regime, which other instruments allow their player to get a full-on workout and save on a gym membership while performing? One thing's for sure - you can't say that for the dainty flute.

Wagner never heard his first completed opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), and his next, Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), was performed only once in his lifetime, where it was an unmitigated disaster. His first success was Rienzi, first performed in Dresden in 1842 after Wagner returned from a dire interlude in Paris. Six hours long, replete with ballets, grand choruses, processions and marches, and with possibly the most terrifying tenor part in Wagner's canon, Rienzi is Wagner's bid to out-grand opera French grand opera. While for modern audiences that might be something of a Pyrrhic victory, in the 19th century Rienzi was Wagner's most performed opera – somewhat to the composer's embarrassment.

Arriving into maturity: Der fliegende Holländer

Der fliegende Holländer’s premiere in Dresden a few months later didn't match Rienzi's success at the time, but musically it marks Wagner’s maturity. Wagner had sold his scenario to Léon Pillet, director of Paris Opéra, in 1841, but to the composer’s horror Pillet commissioned the score from Pierre-Louis Dietsch instead. The premiere of Dietsch's Le Vaisseau fantôme in Paris, just as rehearsals for Der fliegende Holländer began, prompted Wagner to introduce some late revisions, including a speedy relocation from Scotland to the Norwegian coast. Wagner had conceived the opera as a single-act curtain opener for Paris; though he later expanded it into three scenes he continued to think of it as one continuous whole. He was convinced to insert two intervals for the premiere, but in Cosima Wagner's 1901 Bayreuth production she ran the opera without break – a practice followed by many modern productions, including The Royal Opera's. Throughout his life Wagner returned to Der fliegende Holländer. Today, opera houses tend to use either the earliest version or the most definite revisions of 1860.

Understanding 'melos': Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser has the dubious honour of two failed premieres. It was received with bewilderment on its first showing in Dresden on 19 October 1845 – largely because the singers were not up to the score’s singular demands. By now Wagner had refined his ideas of melos (a unique melody essential to each composition) and the result was a particularly challenging role for the titular hero. When in 1861 Napoleon III invited Wagner to stage Tannhäuser in Paris the composer took the opportunity to introduce some significant revisions, including the orgiastic Venusberg ballet that opens the opera. But the riotous Jockey Club de Paris, political opponents of Wagner's patrons and offended at Wagner’s relocation of the ballet from its traditional place after the first interval, were rowdily disruptive, and after three mortifying performances Wagner cancelled the run. He made further revisions to the ‘Paris’ version for an 1875 performance in Vienna, keeping the ballet and dovetailing the overture into the opening of the opera. It’s this version that is most often performed today – though to his death Wagner remained dissatisfied with the work.

King Ludwig II and the Swan Knight: Lohengrin

Lohengrin was first performed on 28 August 1850, though Wagner, exiled in Switzerland after backing the losing side in a political coup, didn't hear it performed until 1861. The premiere was conducted instead by Liszt and was received well, despite the perennial problem of singers not up to their parts. Lohengrin, begun in the winter of 1841–2, was the first fruit of Wagner's obsession with the legend of the Holy Grail. The opera was to have a massive influence – including on Bavarian architecture. Wagner's later patron, the beyond-eccentric King Ludwig II, was inspired in part by Lohengrin to term himself the Swan Knight and build the unfinished fantasy palace Neuschwanstein (New Swan Stone), which he dedicated to Wagner.

Epic opera: Der Ring des Nibelungen

A cycle of four operas, clocking in at 15 hours in total,Der Ring des Nibelungen is one of the most challenging works for an opera company to perform. In it Wagner created a new form of music drama, based on the principles he set out in his 1851 book-length essay Oper und Drama. Condemning what he saw as the commercialism of his contemporaries, he proposed a pure art modelled on his understanding of Ancient Greek theatre, through which society would be served and bettered. In the Ring this philosophy becomes a union between music and text now known as the leitmotif structure. Wagner completely eschewed the number-based format of traditional opera, associating short melodies with dramatic icons and emotions, weaving them together in a continuous composition. The plots are based on Icelandic, Scandinavian and German myths, though Wagner significantly reworked numerous legends to create an entirely original story in which the themes of redemption and sacrifice, constants throughout his mature work, loom large. Though he composed the four operas in order, starting with Das Rheingold in 1853 and finishing Götterdämmerung in 1872, Wagner prepared the texts in reverse, beginning Siegfrieds Tod (which eventually became Götterdämmerung) as early as 1848. At the order of Ludwig II and deeply against Wagner's wishes Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were performed in 1869 and 1870 in Munich, in performances that fell far below Wagner's expectations. The complete Ring cycle was first performed at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival in 1876 on four consecutive nights.

Tristan und Isolde

In the middle of composing the Ring Wagner set aside Siegfried to write Tristan und Isolde, which in the 20th century became arguably his best-known and most influential work – Wagner himself quoted it explicitly in later operas Die Meistersinger and Parsifal. His chief inspiration was his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, poet and the wife of Wagner's generous patron Otto, who in 1857 had given Wagner the villa in which he wrote Tristan. The premiere was serially delayed; one performance had to be postponed at a few hours’ notice after the twin disasters of Isolde losing her voice and bailiffs arriving to confiscate Wagner's possessions. On its eventual premiere on 10 June 1865 Tristan und Isolde created musical history, from the very start of the Prelude with its famous ‘Tristan chord’ (in jazz, a half-diminished 7th). It wasn’t the chord itself that shocked but Wagner's entirely original manipulation of harmony; responding to Tristan and Isolde's yearning and tragedy he creates an aching score where musical resolution is continually evaded, in a language far removed from the diatonic traditions that had governed Western music for centuries.

A return to comedy: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Wagner had conceived of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, his only comic work beside Das Liebesverbot, in 1845 as a pendant to Tannhäuser, following the Greek model of pairing a tragedy with a satyr play. Recurring musical motifs, as in all Wagner's mature operas, still form the foundation of the melodic material, but quite unlike Tristan and the Ring the opera is structured largely in traditional numbers. The score is coloured with an archaic, modal twist, and for long stretches the vocal lines seem almost improvisatory. In the 1860s Wagner had further developed his ideas of the purity and superiority of German culture, which ultimately would be codified in his 1871 tract Über die Bestimmung der Oper (The purpose of opera). It's partly this that inspired him to meld the innovations of his musical language with more historic forms. Wagner also continued to develop his response to the work of the philosopher Schopenhauer and the renunciation of the will, most fully expressed in Hans Sachs's Act III monologue 'Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn'.

A final masterpiece: Parsifal

Wagner's final work, Parsifal, was the only of his operas to be written with direct experience of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Its staging demands are extraordinary even for Wagner, calling for tiers of choirs arranged over a high dome. Wagner's source was Wolfram von Eschenbach's setting of the legend of Perceval, knight of the Grail, which he began to adapt into a libretto as early as 1845. The verse is his freest, and in it the scenario's explicitly Christian context merges with Buddhist ideals and Schopenhauerian self-abnegation into a meditation on compassion. Wagner’s text allows no simple interpretation, and neither does his score. The vocal lines range from declamatory recitative to expansive melody; the use of motifs is infinitely subtle and yields different interpretations with each listening. As with Meistersinger, the tonality is broadly diatonic and incorporates elements of ancient music: the ‘Dresden Amen’, a common congregational response, here becomes a transcendent expression of the Grail, and a simple four-note bell motif signaling the Grail chamber provides material for two immense transition scenes. Wagner called the opera a Bühnenweihfestspiel – a stage-consecrating festival play – and intended it only for Bayreuth. Ludwig II was the first to break the 30-year embargo in a private performance in Munich just a few years after the premiere. The next performance outside Bayreuth was by the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1903.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzmViYZqwLU

It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Wagner’s mature works on the course of music. But his music never seems to become familiar. His operas – complex, immersive and astonishingly entertaining – continue to entrance.

The production is staged with generous philanthropic support from Simon and Virginia Robertson, Peter and Fiona Espenhahn, Malcolm Herring, the Tannhäuser Production Syndicate and the Wagner Circle.

Tristan und Isolde is a co-production with Houston Grand Opera and is given with generous philanthropic support from Peter and Fiona Espenhahn, Malcolm Herring, Bertrand and Elisabeth Meunier and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.

Der fliegende Holländer is given with generous philanthropic support from Marina Hobson OBE and the Wagner Production Syndicate.

Shakespeare's stage direction ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ in The Winter’s Tale(adapted as a ballet by Christopher Wheeldon and Bob Crowley) is famous for giving directors a headache. But rampaging bears are nothing compared to the ambitious instructions that pepper opera librettos. At the end of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the lothario’s downfall is accompanied by librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte's stage direction ‘Fire on all sides; earthquake’ (though Kasper Holten introduces a whole host of different challenges in his spectacular projection-enhanced Royal Opera production). But even Da Ponte is arguably bested by the dramatic ending of Handel’s Semele, where ‘Jupiter descends in a cloud; flashes of lightning issue from either side’.

Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schattenpresents several intriguing posers for the director, particularly towards the end of Act I. The Empress has no shadow and cannot have children without one. Somewhat against her better judgement she persuades a mortal woman, Barak's Wife, to give the Empress her shadow. As Barak’s Wife prepares a supper of fish, she hears mysterious singing, and ‘Suddenly the voices of five children ring out fearfully through the air, as if the little fish in the pan are singing’.

Strauss worried that Hofmannsthal's directions implied that Barak might be about to eat his own unborn children: 'One is bound to identify the unborn children with the little fishes in the frying-pan!’ Though the singing fish-children stayed, Hofmannsthal did make one concession – in the ensuing scene Barak leaves the fish alone and eats some bread instead.

But all this is small fry compared to Die Zauberflöte(one of Strauss and Hofmannsthal's models for Die Frau). The serpent that opens Mozart's opera may just be a question of a little (a lot of) puppetry, but Tamino and Pamina's ‘trials of fire and water’ in the opera’s closing moments are another thing altogether. Emanuel Schikaneder’s original stage directions are ambitiously precise: ‘The scene is transformed into two large mountains: one with a thundering waterfall, the other belching out fire; each mountain has an open grid through which fire and water may be seen.’

But Wagner is the true master of impossible stage directions – his Ring cycle demanded stage effects so ambitious he had to build a whole new opera house, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. The astounding technical demands of the Ring made its first full staging in 1876 a logistical nightmare. Siegfried's dragon was missing its central section – allegedly the torso had been sent to Beirut rather than Bayreuth. The Rhinemaidens of Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung were perched on tall stage wagons behind a gauze illuminated with gas light to give the impression of their aquatic frollicking. But still theTelegraph reviewer complained that they were ‘a little too mechanical and wanting in freedom’.

The impossible stage direction has become a much loved operatic tradition, enjoyed by spectators and relished by directors. These fires, earthquakes and metamorphoses are like gauntlets thrown down by composers and librettists centuries earlier. Whether directors take a literal or metaphorical approach, it is always fascinating to see how challenging stage directions translate into a theatrical experience.

The 2012-13 Season was a bumper one for Wagner fans, bookended by bicentenary celebration stagings of the Ring Cycle at both the Royal Opera House and BBC Proms. Keith Warner's Royal Opera production returned to Covent Garden in September 2012 and was accompanied by a series of ROH Insights events intended to give a deeper understanding of Wagner's masterpiece.

Politics and The Ring

Where his name is mentioned, issues of the relationship between Wagner and politics are never far behind. An Insights session on this topic featured former politician and broadcaster Michael Portillo, political columnist Matthew d’Ancona and Assistant Editor of the Guardian, Martin Kettle. They discussed whether the cycle is a reflection of political ideology, and the misappropriation and misunderstanding of Wagner’s work by the Nazis. Touching on the central character of Wotan, Matthew d'Ancona remarked that the King of the Gods reminded him of a remark by Bill Clinton: 'Anyone in power will pay a huge price'.

Listen to highlights from the Wagner, Ring and Politics Insight session:

Love and The Ring

Does true love exist? The question was posited during a Ring and love discussion involving philosopher Roger Scruton, broadcaster Peggy Reynolds and musicologist John Deathridge. 'Love is never what it seems in The Ring. Even when it’s at its noblest there are flaws', said chair Christopher Cook when discussion turned to power dynamics between the characters.

Listen to highlights from the Ring and love Insight session:

Nature and The Ring

Issues surrounding The Ring and nature were discussed by broadcaster Petroc Trelawny, writers George Monbiot and Sarah Lenton, mathematician and broadcaster Marcus du Sautoy and Director of The Royal Opera Kasper Holten. The panel examined the notion of The Ring as a parable of our own ecological destruction of the planet. They also questioned whether human beings can have a lasting impact on the environment.

Listen to highlights from the Ring and nature Insight session:

Redemption and The Ring

The Ring's final opera Götterdämmerung closes with the end of the world but, when all is said and done, are any of the characters truly redeemed at the end of the world? As part of a discussion on redemption and The Ring philosopher Michael Tanner told Christopher Cook and Richard Bell that: 'Wagner thought when he began writing The Ring Cycle that love would save all. As he went on, he realized that in fact it ends up destroying all the characters'.

Christopher Cook chaired the discussion, which ranged from questions of whether love is the opposite of power to whether true love can ever be found.

"Love is never what it seems in The Ring. Even when it's at its noblest there are flaws", Christopher said. With the conversation turning to power dynamics between the characters, Peggy stated, "In some ways love is always about the surrender of power - you have to think of an other".

Ring Cycle Director Keith Warner was interviewed by Director of the Royal Opera Kasper Holten as part of a recent In Conversation event.

Keith spoke about his career, what inspired his production of Richard Wagner's masterwork and how he tackled such an ambitious project He also spoke about whether there is new hope at the end of the piece or whether it is entirely pessimistic.

"It's a massive artistic experience that we all have together. I think Wagner's real religion is art and theatre itself," Keith told Kasper. "He says, we who've experienced this take from it and we go out and change the world or change ourselves."

Issues surrounding Nature and Wagner's Ring Cycle were recently examined as part of an ROH Insights session.

Panelists at the event, which was chaired by broadcaster Petroc Trelawny, looked at how nature is represented in the work and the question of whether The Ring is a parable of our own ecologicaldestruction of the planet. They also questioned whether Man's impact on the environment is ever possible human beings can have a lasting impact on the environment.

The panel for the event included writers George Monbiot and Sarah Lenton, mathematician and broadcaster Marcus du Sautoy and Director of The Royal Opera Kasper Holten. As with all events in the series, the event was livetweeted.

With the Royal Opera House 2012/13 season underway after curtain up on Keith Warner's Ring Cycle, we've created an infographic to pick out a few highlights and interesting facts around the various productions.

Among other nuggets of information, you can find out who the season's most represented composers and choreographers are, the busiest artists and trivia about some of the productions we're most excited for.

Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle full of musical and dramatic extremes. The music ranges from Siegmund and Sieglinde's rapturous love duet in Die Walküre to Hagen's terrifying summoning of Gunther's vassals. It encompasses Wotan's despairing Act II monologue in Die Walküre and the violent close to Act II of Götterdämmerung, as well as Siegfried's joyful forging song in Act I of Siegfried and the idyllic depiction of nature in Act II of Siegfried. Throughout the cycle, the richly varied orchestration and the use of motifs eloquently depict characters' states of mind and events in the drama.

"A constant source of wonderment for all orchestral players is how a single human brain could contain so many notes, so many sounds and textures and still be providing challenges to performers more than 130 years after the notes were first put onto the page."

- Nigel Bates, former Section Principal Percussion with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Wagner began working on Der Ring des Nibelungen as early as 1848, initially planning a single opera entitled Siegfrieds Tod. It took him more than twenty years to complete the cycle, with a pause in the middle during which he wrote Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Der Ring des Nibelungen was first performed in its entirety at the first Bayreuth Festival in August 1876 in the opera house Wagner designed specially for it.

The plot of Der Ring des Nibelungen was inspired by a vast array of sources, including the Norse sagas and the epic German Nibelungenlied. Wagner wrote his own libretto. He worked into it ideas about the nature of love, morality and happiness drawn from his own life as well as from philosophers that he admired, including Feuerbach and Schopenhauer.

"To watch Wagner construct and stage the Ring is to watch a master storyteller at work. He shaped the original myths so deftly that it comes as quite a shock to find there is no world-destroying ring in Norse mythology."

- Sarah Lenton, writer on 18th- and 19th-century theatre

The Royal Opera's production of Der Ring des Nibelungen uses symbols from myth and Wagner's time, and even from the 20th century and the present day, bringing out both the realistic and fantastical elements in this operatic cycle. Genetics, astronomy, philosophy, 19th-century ideas on drama, industrialization and psychology are all explored in the designs and in director Keith Warner's interpretation.

"It is an overwhelming task to put on 16 hours of music theatre that requires high quality singing and playing; strength, endurance and preparation; stunning theatrical effects; and the telling of the story of a world from its beginning to its end. This alone makes the Ring cycle the greatest challenge for an opera house to take on, and sets the standard for what we can achieve."

- Kasper Holten, Director of Opera

The quotations accompanying this article are taken from the Royal Opera House programme book for Der Ring des Nibelungen. Programme books are available to buy before performances at the Royal Opera House at sales points in the Main Entrance Foyer, the Paul Amphitheatre Lobby.